


Dragon's Rest

by BobRussellFan



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24816742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BobRussellFan/pseuds/BobRussellFan
Summary: A short piece on death.
Relationships: Toph/Kanto, Zuko/Mai
Kudos: 34





	Dragon's Rest

In the end, it was all very peaceful - a quiet slipping away in his bed above his tea shop while he slept. It was just how he would have wanted it. (Iroh had been worried near the end that his life would end in front of the customers - not so much because he feared the loss of his dignity, but because he didn't want to frighten any of the children of Ba Sing Se - the younger generation having grown up without the war and the death that came with it.) 

The first person to find him was his assistant, a woman named Ying who spent a few terrifying moments kneeling on the floor by her employer's body before she reminded herself that things had changed in ten years and she would _not_ be incinerated on the steps of the Fire Nation embassy if she showed up to announce that the Dragon of the West had died. So she hung up the closed sign in the door and walked to the Embassy to give them the news, thinking about her son and how sad he would be to learn that he'd never see Iroh again. 

-

Word reached the rest of the Earth Kingdom first, catching Toph Beifong in a visit home, and it struck her harder than she'd expected. It wasn't that she hadn't been expecting the old man's death - they all had. But it was a blow just the same, a reminder that even the greatest mountains eventually crumble. That night she met a man named Kanto over drinks and her guard was down - not that he beat her in Earth-wrestling behind the tavern, of course, but when he asked her to visit his rooms on the other side of the city, she didn't say no. But that's a story for another time. 

-

Word reached the Fire Nation ahead of the messenger hawk. Aang had felt the vibrations in the spirit world and knew what they meant, and thanks to his quick flight across the ocean and a late night warning, Fire Lord Zuko was composed enough to sit gravely on his throne and accept the news before the nation. Prince Iroh had requested that he be burned (as befit a prince of the blood of dragons) and his ashes scattered in the turtleduck pond outside the palace that had once been his home in the capital city, and on a certain hilltop in the outskirts of Ba Sing Se, a nameless spot where the advance of the Fire Nation armies had been halted years earlier, just after the Dragon of the West had broken through the city's outer walls. 

(The Fire Lord knew who else rested on that hill.)

It was, in theory, an auspicious time. The Queen-Consort was expecting again, grumpy and gravid, and a death before a birth meant good fortune. Neither she nor her husband felt particularly auspicious at the time. They sat together by the pond, quiet for a while, before Zuko said, "The strange thing is, I don't feel sad." 

Mai looked at her husband, eloquent eyebrow raised, hand on her stomach. She missed Iroh too, who'd always seemed the only decent man in the royal family besides her husband, but she missed a great many people who hadn't died so easily in the last decade. _Blue fire flashed behind her eyes, amid a laugh she knew she'd be hearing when she was Iroh's age_ 

"You know how he's been," said Zuko. "Communing with the dragons, going into the spirit world..." He threw a bit of bread, saved in his robe's lap, to the turtleducks. "He's been leaving us for a long time. He's just...finished." He stared at the pond, and felt himself relax slightly when his wife touched his hand. 

"Not everyone's that lucky," she said softly. "There's not a wrong way to feel when someone dies." She leaned against him, and winced, as she said, "But we're still naming her Izumi. You know what he said about Iroha." 

"That it means _the latrine_ in the Northern Water Tribe language," said Zuko, wincing at the memory of Iroh's last state visit. Just four months earlier... Iroh had not actually said this meant the name was a bad thing, but you couldn't have a Fire Lady whose name meant latrine! "Are you still sure it's a girl?"

"Trust me," said Mai, hand on her stomach still, "boys are much more trouble than this..." 

"But you said this was the worst experience of your life," said Zuko in what he thought was a reasonable tone, "how could a boy be any more trouble-" 

Then she punched him in the arm, and all was well with the royal family. Eventually. 

-

And in another place, the Dragon of the West found himself at a table with a pot of tea. He would find later on that there were a great many tables and teapots in the spirit world, and a great many beings to share them with. But this one was enough. 

"Welcome home, father."


End file.
